Worron  (Firebird)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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1987 Firebird
Status: No Download, Findability: 1/5

Coding: Richard Paynter
Graphics: Richard Paynter
Sound: Unknown

Worron is a rather bizarre little title, which was never advertised, and only came about thanks to Richard Paynter getting in touch to shed some light on the title. Rick signed a contact with Firebird in October 1987 to complete this particular game, and this was written about a year or two after winning an Elite competition, where Richard had met Colin Fuidge (who presented his award).

The game itself was a top down Sabre Wulf style game, with a hint of platform action mixed in according to Richard. Bas-refief graphics were used to good effect to give the perception of depth going into the screen. For instance, you could only run over platforms when they were at the correct level. The game also included some jazzy parallax scrolling and all kinds of nice little features. Apparently, Mark Greenshields was so impressed with the scrolling, he borrowed the routine for one of his games.

Everything was signed off with Firebird, and the game was delivered about 2 weeks later. Richard also got an advanced royalty cheque too – but that was it.   Richard went to work with Paranoid Software for a bit, before then going off to University.  Throughout that time he never saw Worron appear in the shops.

Thanks to Richard Hewison’s investigations, we found out that Colin Fuidge (who had signed up the game), had been drunk when he originally agreed to sign the title, and when the final version turned up – he didn’t like it.  With work going on with setting up Silverbird, the title was put to one side with the hope of maybe trying to rescue it.   When it was sidelined though,  it was completely forgotten about.  So that is why it never got to the shops!

When we asked Richard for a copy of the game though, he sadly had no longer kept any of his disks.  The likelihood of ever finding it even from an ex-Firebird employee was looking bleak.  Until that is we received a last batch of Darren Melbourne’s disks in December 2015 – where we were happy to discover two builds of the game, including the version sent to Firebird!

Although the game is well presented and (to be fair) is an early effort from Richard,  we think that Colin was right that the game wasn’t quite there.  It has lots of promise, but there are a fair few things broken in the game which don’t make it too playable overall.

What is odd, is that although the game seems to be complete (with an ending screen) – it doesn’t seem to match the descriptions that we have heard about the game.  It also does not include any sound, apart from on the high-score table.   Is it possible that we are missing a slightly later version?  we hope to confirm from Richard again soon when he sees the game – but we think that the recollections about tunes/sfx may have been blurred from another project.

For now, check out the game which was sidelined by Firebird, which has been fixed by Martin Pugh – so it no longer crashes when you lose all your lives.  An interesting piece of Firebird history saved…

Contributions: Richard Paynter, Richard Hewison, Martin Pugh

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Richard Paynter talks about work on Worron…

“Spotted your site whilst randomly googling and noticed myself on there as Rick Paynter (how I used to be known at school). I did indeed know the guys at Paranoid Software back in 86/87 when I was 16/17. I was a commodore 64 programmer back then, although only completed one game “Worron” for Firebird, which never got released.

It was back in August 1985 when I was 15… I had been writing c64 games for about a year or so, but only at home and few of them were completed. I was still learning.

I took part in an Elite-athon down at Regal Software in Gillingham, Kent in that August 1985, where I met a Colin Fuidge of Firebird who was there to present the prize. It was a 24 hour charity thing that my team of two won… I still have the prize, an Order of Elite lying around somewhere gathering dust. Anyway, in 1986 when I had completed my first game, “Worron” (can’t remember why on earth I called it that, but thought it sounded good at the time), I decided that Colin might be a good contact for marketting it. Hence I rang him up out of the blue and took my 16 year self up to New Oxford St to their offices.

They liked the game and I signed an advance contract, getting 1.5k of royalties up front, which I spent on my first musical gear. I delivered them the final disks and all was done and dusted, awaiting release.

I did everything on the game, including graphics and music (something I now do professionally – see www.richardpaynter.com). The game was a top-down Sabre Wulf style game, but was also a platform game. I used bas-relief graphics to give the perception of depth going into the screen. You could only run over platforms when they were at the correct level. It had parallax scrolling, the works. In fact, I believe my scolling routing was borrowed by Mark Greenshields for one of this games… Was quite pleased with it.

Time passed and time passed, I got involved with Paranoid Software/Nexus for a bit, before heading off to University in summer 1988, but heard nothing of Worron. After a number of years I forgot about it, the c64 scene had moved on etc. as had I… Eventually, I guess my contract expired. I was too involved in other things at that stage to go back after it… and too naive to think that the c64 would ever re-surface in the emulator world. All disks have long since ended up on a dump somewhere unfortunately.”

Richard Paynter.


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/worron/
